Structural Validity
Structural validity is a subdomain of construct validity that uses factor analysis to test if a measure captures the hypothesized dimensionality of a construct1.
According to COSMIN, structural validity is an aspect of construct validity and only serves to supplement hypothesis-testing validity1. Structural validity cannot replace hypothesis-testing validity1.
The COSMIN group recommends that structural validations be undertake using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), rather than exploratory factor analysis (EFA) because confirmatory factor analysis can be used to test explicit hypotheses about an instrument’s structure. Exploratory factor analysis, by contrast, is largely a tool for exploring the dimensionality of a set of items, and for identifying items to revise or eliminate. In the sample of nursing articles, factor analysis was undertaken in 85 studies (81.0%), and exploratory factor analysis was used exclusively in 51 of these (60.0%). The remaining studies that involved factor analysis used either confirmatory factor analysis alone (18 studies), or used both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (16 studies).”